Edward Albee Learns From College Teaching

October 20, 1986|By STEVE NICHOL, Staff Writer

When two-time Pulitzer Prize playwright Edward Albee begins a month-long seminar at Florida Atlantic University on Nov. 3, he will not only take the students` needs and interests into consideration, but his own.

``I find I still have a lot to learn with a lot of things. Interaction with students teaches me a lot about my craft and maybe they`ll learn a lot about their craft at the same time,`` said Albee.

He replaces playwright Joshua Logan, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play South Pacific. Logan, 78, stepped down this spring after three years due to poor health.

``I`m not exactly certain what I`ll do. The course is advertised as play writing. It depends on the students. There will be some acting, some directing. The course will be based on all of that,`` said Albee in a telephone interview. ``It meets four days a week. I don`t plan to lecture four days a week. I don`t have enough information,`` said Albee, who won his first Pulitzer in 1967 for the play A Delicate Balance. He won his second in 1975 for Seascape.

Albee won a Tony Award in 1962 for his play, Who`s Afraid of Virgina Woolf?

The play, perhaps his best known, was made into a movie featuring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The play, which returned to Broadway in 1976, was considered controversial when it first came out, due to its subject and language.

The class Albee will teach on the Boca Raton campus of FAU will primarily be graduate students and have no more than 25 people in it, Albee said.

``It will be a form of workshop, where practical work will be done,`` Albee said. ``I would like to work with scripts and interesting scenes.``

Albee is quite familiar with the campus scene.

``Every January I go to Johns Hopkins University, working with student actors, playwrights, directors. And I usually go to two or three other universities for a month.``

Albee said he could not remember how long he`s been teaching on campuses. ``It stretches back to the limits of my mind.``

He said he is looking forward to his first extended visit at FAU. ``I`m a pretty hedonistic person. I wouldn`t want to do what I wouldn`t,`` he said. Albee gave a lecture at FAU in Boca Raton this spring as part of the Palm Beach Festival. While there, plans for a lengthier visit began to formulate.

``I was down at Coconut Grove, directing my play, Seascape. During the course of that, I made a lecture at FAU and happened to mention I do these things ... and here I am, or there I am going to be,`` said Albee.

In addition to teaching, Albee will read selections from his plays, with commentary, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. in the FAU Theatre. Tickets are $10, with proceeds benefiting the FAU Theatre Scholarship Fund.